Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction training

Periodically we offer MBSR training to the public. This training, when offered, is posted on out Meetup site. http://www.meetup.com/Universalus-Community/ This is not a certification course, but is offered to the public for personal use.

Would you like to deepen your mindfulness practice? If so, this training
can be of great benefit to you.

Thousands
of people have used this program either alone or in conjunction with the books
to develop and sustain a meditation practice based on mindfulness, and to
benefit from its stress reducing, healing, and transformational potential when
practiced regularly. The experience is based on the ancient practice of Insight
(Vipassana) meditation. .

Each of
the 10 sessions is approximately 75 minutes

Schedule

Session 1:
Body Scan
Meditation. This is
the first guided meditation program that people use in the Medical School Stress
Reduction Clinic. The body scan is a closely guided journey through your body as
you bring moment-to-moment awareness to every region in turn, starting with the
toes of the left foot. It is done lying on your back if possible. Through
regular practice, it can help you to enter and explore deep states of
relaxation, become much more intimate and accepting of your body as it is, learn
to work effectively with body sensations and feelings of discomfort and pain,
and cultivate increasing powers of concentration (one-pointed attention) and
mindfulness (a flexible, moment-to-moment, non-judging awareness).

Session
2: Sitting
Meditation. Detailed guidance and instruction for the practice of mindfulness
meditation in a formal sitting posture, either on a straight-backed chair or on
the floor on a cushion. There are long stretches of silence interspersed within
the guidance for you to practice on your own. Sitting meditation is the
traditional core practice of mindfulness meditation.

Session
4: 4 guided meditations done in a lying
down position. Good to practice in the evenings before bed or early mornings
when first waking up. 10 minutes / 20 minutes / 30
minutes

Session
5: A guided "mountain" and a guided
"lake" meditation. These images are used in the service of strengthening one's
understanding of mindfulness practice. They speak to deep aspects of the psyche
and support the cultivation of silence, stillness, resolve, and
wakefulness.Mountain Meditation: 20 minutes / Lake Meditation: 20
minutes

Session
6: Silence with Bells: at 5, 10, 20,
and 30 minutes. Helps in practicing on your own without guidance, yet
keeping track of the time without looking at a clock. Silence, with bells
at random times up to 30 minutes. Helps in developing calmness and
equanimity (non-reactivity), as the bells ring at irregular intervals, sometimes
loudly.

Session
7:Guided meditations on Dr. Kabat-Zinn's new
book, Coming to Our Senses:
Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. It begins with
the cultivation of mindfulness of breathing (the "breathscape") and mindfulness
of body sensations (the "bodyscape")(a) Breathscape (20 minutes);
(b) Bodyscape (20 minutes); (c) Breathscape and Bodyscape, with more silence and
less guidance (20 minutes).

Session
8: The cultivation of mindfulness via
the experience of hearing whatever is coming to the ears (the "soundscape") and
to the experiencing of thoughts and emotions unfolding from moment to moment
(the "mindscape"). This includes a lying down meditation in the yogic corpse
pose, specifically designed to help us learn how to cultivate mindfulness while
lying down, to actually learn how to fall awake to the full range of our present
moment experience by "dying" to the past and the future, rather than, as so
often happens when practicing meditation while lying down, inadvertently falling
asleep. (a) Soundscape (27 minutes); (b) Mindscape (20 minutes); (c) Dying
Before You Die ? Corpse pose meditation (30 minutes).

Session
9:Features
the practice of choiceless awareness (the "nowscape"), in which we let go of
selecting specific objects of attention to feature in the field of awareness and
to be mindful of, and instead, invite our awareness to be so spacious that it
includes anything and everything that might arise in any present moment, just as
a mirror does not choose what to reflect but reflects whatever comes before it.
Also features instructions for mindful walking meditation, which can be
practiced on your own once you have listened to the instructions. (a) Choiceless
awareness / Nowscape (30 minutes); (b) Walking Meditation Instructions (10
minutes).

Session
10:Features
an extended loving kindness meditation, directed both inwardly and outwardly, in
which we cultivate intimacy with the landscape of our own heart, the heartscape
and open to its capacity for deep nurturance, empathy, and healing for ourselves
and for others . It also includes a guided meditation on how to bring
mindfulness effortlessly into every aspect of everyday life, into what you might
call the lifescape. When all is said and done, perhaps this is the most profound
and most important of all these practices, and will make the most difference in
your life and the lives of those you love and care for. (a) Lovingkindness /
Heartscape (47 minutes); (b) Mindfulness in Everyday Life / Lifescape (12
minutes).

The fee
for each session is 30$, Payment in full for all 10 sessions must be made prior to the beginning of the first session.